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![[Flag of Manage]](../images/b/be-whtma.gif)
Municipal flag of Manage - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 26 November 2005
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The municipality of Manage (21,869 inhabitants; 1,969 ha) is located 25 km north-west of Charleroi and 6 kilometers north-east of La Louvière. It is made since 1976 of the former municipalities of Bois-d'Haine, Fayt-lez-Manage, La Hestre (incorporating Bellecourt since 1 January 1971) and Manage.
The territory of Manage was initially covered with forests, as
reflected by the toponymy: Bois-d'Haine refers to a wood (in French,
bois), whereas Fayt and La Hestre refer to the beech (in Latin,
fagus; in French, hêtre; in some regions of France, fayard). The
first Celtic settlements were probably set up in clearings.
In 1904, Raoul Warocqué supervized archeological excavations in
Fayt-les-Manage. A Gallo-Roman necropolis yielded a lot of artifacts,
such as funerary urns, bowls, glassware, fibula and coins, shown today
in the Royal Museum of Mariemont. Another Gallo-Roman site was found in
1997.
In the Middle Ages, the villages of Fayt, Bois-d'Haine, La Hestre and
Bellecourt belonged to the County of Hainaut, whereas Manage belonged
to the Duchy of Brabant. Being on the border, the villages were often
sacked during wars, especially in the XVIIth century. On 11 August
1674, a bloody fighting opposed in Manage and Fayt Louis XIV's troops
(50,000) commanded by the Prince of Condé to a coalition of Spanish,
Dutch and Imperial troops (65,000) commanded by the Prince of Orange.
The fighting is known as the battle of Seneffe since it started in the morning near that village; it spread later to the St. Nicolas Priory
and the village of Feyt, and ended at sundown in the ravine of
Escaille. The two camps claimed the victory; between 14,000 and 28,000
were killed and the villages located on the battlefield were completely
destroyed.
In 1795, the municipalities of Bellecourt, La Hestre (seceded from
Haine-Saint-Pierre), Bois-d'Haine and Fayt (then called
Fayt-lez-Seneffe) were set up. Manage was then a hamlet of Seneffe.
Coal mining started in 1755 in La Hestre with the founding of the
Société des charbonnages d'Haine-Saint-Pierre et La Hestre. The coal
industry was boosted by the building of the road Nivelles-Bray,
achieved in 1764. In the beginning of the XIXth century, several
villagers from Manage abandoned agriculture and worked in the
neigghbouring collieries of Mariemont, Bascoup, Haine-Saint-Pierre,
Haine-Saint-Paul, La Louvière, etc.. In Manage, coal was exploited only
in Haine-Saint-Pierre and La Hestre; attemps of digging mines in
Bois-d'Haine, Fayt and Manage failed.
In 1821, the manufacturer François-Isidore Dupont (1780-1838) built in
Fayt an industrial complex with forges and rolling mills. The complex
produced, among others, some of the rails used to build the
Brussels-Mechelen railway, which was the first railway built in continental Europe. Thanks to Adolphe Dechamps (1807-1875), Minister in
the 1840-1850s, who settled in the castle of Scailmont in 1815, Manage
became a main rail junction. The section Braine-le-Comte-Manage of the Brussels-Charleroi line was inuagurated in 1842; the first station was
built in Manage the next year. After the building of the Mons-Manage
(1849), Manage-Wavre (1854) and Manage-Piéton (1865), the station was isolated in the middle of the ways, which caused several accidents. It
was decided to build a new station, inaugurated in 1901 and then one of
the biggest stations in Belgium. The station was demolished in 1973.
The railway station boosted the local economy. In 1849,
Apollinaire-Adrien Bougard opened a glassworks. A dozen of other
glassworks was founded from 1880 onwards by famous master glaziers'
dynasties such as Wauty, Michotte, Hirsch and Castelain. The parish of
Manage seceded from Seneffe in 1854 and Manage was eventually made an
independent municipality in July 1880.
In Bois-d'Haine, Augustin Gilson founded at the end of the XIXth
century the world famous bolt factory Boulonneries Gilson and the
Ateliers du Thiriau.
Industrialization caused a dramatic increase in the population of
the villages and Manage became a main center of the struggle for
workers' emancipation. A first socialist workers' cooperative called
La solidarité was founded in the colliery of Basse-Hestre in 1869.
Some of his members set up a few years later the Maison du Peuple et
du Progrès in Jolimont and the cooperative Le Progrès (1886),
directed by Théophile Massart (1840-1904). In 1887, Emile Herman in
Fayt and Ferdinand Cavrot in La Hestre were among the first socialists
elected Municipal Councillors in Belgium.
In 1911, the old Société des charbonnages de Haine-Saint-Pierre et La
Hestre was suppressed and its remains absorbed by the colliery of
Mariemont, which closed the colliery of La Hestre.
In 1942, the municipalities forming now Manage were incorporated into the municipality of La Louvière; they became independent again after the liberation in September 1944. The big industries closed in the 1960s, for instance Gilson in Bois-d'Haine and Anglo-Germain in La Croyère (1967).
Source:Municipal website, text by Joseph Strale
Ivan Sache, 26 November 2005
The municipal flag of Manage is quartered yellow-blue-red-white.
The flag follows the proposal made by the
Heraldry and Vexillological Council of the French Community and described in Armoiries communales en Belgique. Communes wallonnes, bruxelloises et
germanophones as:
Ecartelé de jaune, bleu, rouge et blanc.
The flag is based on the municipal arms of Manage.
The municipal website has more details on the municipal coat of arms of
Manage (again by Joseph Strale, based on an article by Jacques
Lefèbvre, Le Peuple, 11 January 1982).
Before the municipal reform of 1976, four out of the five merged
villages (including Bellecourt, incorporated into La Hestre in 1971)
had a coat of arms. Only Manage had no arms. The arms of the four
villages were based on the seals of the feudal families owning them
during the Ancient Regime.
Bellecourt belonged to the family of Le Roeulx, vassal of the Counts of Hainaut, and used the arms of the Counts as its seal. On 26 July 1926,
the municipality of Bellecourt was granted the quartered arms of
Hainaut as its municipal arms.
Bois-d'Haine also belonged to the Counts of Hainaut, but was granted
Charles V's Imperial eagle as its municipal arms on 3 July 1925.
Fayt was owned by the family of Gongnies from the XVth century onwards.
The municipality was granted the former arms of this family as its
municipal arms on 23 March 1935.
La Hestre was owned by the Montigny and was granted the arms of this
family as its municipal arms on 8 April 1929.
On 30 June 1977, the Municipal Council of the new municipality of Manage applied for municipal arms. The proposal was accepted by the Heraldry Council of the General Directorate of Regional and Local Institutions on 16 November 1981. Manage was one of the first Walloon municipalities to have new municipal arms, described as:
Ecartelé au 1, écartelé au premier et au quatrième d'or au lion de sable, armé: et lampassé de gueules, au deuxième et troisième, d'or au lion de gueules, arméet lampassé d'azur, qui est de Hainaut; au 2, burelé d'argent et d'azur de douze pièces qui est de Montigny; au 3, d'azur à la croix ancrée d'argent, qui est de Gongnies; au 4, d'or à l'aigle bicéphale éployée de sable, qui est de l'Empire.Arnaud Leroy, Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 11 November 2005